Feral Interactive today announced that the award-winning strategy game XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Elite Edition will be released on the Mac this Spring. The Elite Edition includes the Slingshot and Elite Soldier Pack add-on content, as well as the Second Wave update. Developed by Firaxis Games and published by 2K Games for Windows PC and consoles, XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a re-imagining of the classic X-COM: UFO Defense.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown expands on the X-COM legacy with an entirely new story, enemies and technologies to fight hostile aliens and defend Earth. In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, players oversee combat strategies and individual unit tactics, as well as base management and resource allocation while playing as the commander of a secret global military organization, XCOM. With equal emphasis on deep strategy and intense tactical combat, XCOM: Enemy Unknown allows gamers to control the fate of the human race by defending against a terrifying global alien invasion.

The Mac release of XCOM: Enemy Unknown is the Elite Edition, and contains all previously released add-on content and updates. XCOM: Enemy Unknown – Elite Edition includes the Slingshot and Elite Soldier Pack add-on content, as well as the Second Wave update, which includes a series of gameplay modifiers that add further depth and flexibility to the campaign.

Inside Mac Games has posted a new review of Feral Interactive's Empire: Total War Gold Edition. The Mac version includes Empire: Total War, the Warpath Campaign DLC, The four Special Forces Units and Elite Units DLC packs, as well as all the updates and improvements.

Here's an excerpt:

Within the Grand Campaign you have the option of playing as a whole host of countries, from the great powers of the time such as England, France and Spain to smaller and farther flung countries such as the Mughal empire in South Asia. Each campaign has several options related to goals and length, but in general your job is to control a certain number of total territories by the end, with some specific areas you are also required to control. To do this you will use your turns to build buildings, recruit and move armies and navies, research technology, send spies and ambassadors to other regions, and negotiate with allies and enemies to try and achieve your goals. And when you’re done with your turn, all the other countries in the game, whether run by humans in multi-play or by the computer AI, will do the same. Computer controlled countries will tend to act in ways similar to their historical counterparts, but because humans are involved also, don’t expect to necessarily be refighting famous wars or battles from this period. All of these options should keep even the wonkiest turn-based strategy fan satisfied.

Pilot Sophie from Dogmelon Pty Ltd is now available for download and purchase from Mac Game Store. The unique arcade title challenges players to guide Sophie through increasingly difficult levels filled with colorful rotating circular targets to hit.

Can you guide Sophie through the coloured rings?

Match the colors to make it through, but watch out for the electric barriers!

Pilot Sophie is an original arcade game where the player rotates Sophie to hit colored, circular targets.

As the player progresses, targets become smaller, and rotate faster. Also making life difficult are barriers to be dodged.

But most fiendish of all are the reversed targets which look similar to normal targets but actually have their colours reversed. The trick to lining up these targets is to fold Sophie’s arms. Complicating matters is that while Sophie’s arms are crossed, she is unable to steer.

Pilot Sophie includes several game modes:

Challenge Mode – progress through levels of increasing difficulty, to get the maximum score.

Constellation Mode – reveal the constellation by visiting all the stars. Each star contains a hand-crafted level.

Infinity Mode – a game which literally runs forever. When enough targets are hit, the player is promoted to a higher level. Conversely, miss too many and demotion will follow. The player will naturally end up playing levels which match their ability. This mode is ideal for players with only a few minutes to play, since the game can be immediately picked up from where it was left off last time.

Telltale Games' Gary Whitta, a story consultant for the company and the writer of the fourth episode of The Walking Dead episodic game series, recently revealed to IGN that more Walking Dead content may be released before the second season. Based on the graphic novels by Robert Kirkman, the adventure follows the story of a band of zombie apocalypse survivors.

"I can tell you what you already know, which is season two is coming. There’s not much to say because it really is very early…it’s a way off," said Whitta. "But, knowing that it’s a way off, and knowing that people are hungry for more walking Dead…there may very well be more Walking Dead from Telltale before season two. We may have a little something extra for you between season one and two.” Whitta continued to tease that something is in the works right now “that will make the wait for season two slightly less agonizing.”

Sinister Design has posted a new blog article about development on Telepath Tactics, revealing information about a variety of new features as well as plans to make another Kickstarter attempt in March. Set in the world of the Telepath RPG universe, the turn-based multiplayer tactics game will feature support for up to six players in hotseat mode, a new art style, redesigned UI, and a new combat engine.

You can now create ice bridges by using Cold element attacks on water tiles. This was a feature I’d been wanting in the game for some time; all in all, it took less than an hour to add. Have a look.

The map editor now includes a new dialog editor that makes it easy to create your own dialog trees and edit existing ones. I’ve also extended the dialog/scripting system with new triggers and script actions to ensure lots of flexibility to create interesting branching conversations and branching campaigns. Of particular note is the fact that you can now define, modify, check and display custom variables in dialog. This allows you to model money, shops, character relationships, or just about anything else you can think of during the course of a campaign. You can see this stuff in action in the video below!

I’ve been making a lot of improvements to game interface in anticipation of releasing an updated demo. I’ve replaced the ugly beige dialog box with a somewhat nicer looking placeholder graphic, and have reworked my whole approach to the battle GUI. I’m looking to hit a sweet spot between useability and minimal screen clutter–unexpectedly, this led me back toward an implementation reminiscent of the combat GUI window from Telepath RPG: Servants of God. You can see the new interface design below:

I’ve rewritten the code which establishes panning bounds for the game’s maps to avoid showing black space on larger maps when in fullscreen mode, and minimizing the amount visible on maps which are smaller than the size of the screen. (More details on that here if you’re curious.)

Benn Marion has made some much-needed tweaks to the title screen art, and it’s now looking awfully nice

Composer Ryan Richko is now working on the Telepath Tactics soundtrack. My favorite track he’s sent in so far is a sinister, ambient piece called “Evil Lurks.” Give it a listen!

Attack animations are now coded into the engine itself. Whenever you attack with a character, the game now checks for an animation specific to the attack being launched. If it can’t find one, it instead loads a default animation (which you can define on a character-by-character basis). The attack animations for the Swordsman, Cavalier, Cryokineticist, Bowman and Healer are currently in-game and working; the others are still being created.

Also, we’ve got some lovely death poses underway for the game’s various characters.

In short: work on the game’s animations is progressing slowly, but it is progressing. However, I’ll be able to speed things up dramatically with successful Kickstarter funding.

Speaking of which! The Kickstarter will launch on or about March 14th. Make sure you’re following us on Twitter and on Facebook–we’ll be posting announcements when the time comes, and we’ll need your help to spread the word!